PlayHQ marks European expansion with RefAssist partnership

Fast growing Sports tech startup PlayHQ has today announced a partnership with RefAssist, a global online solutions provider for referee and official management.

On a mission to reinvent community sport technology by replacing decades of unreliable legacy systems, spreadsheets and paper-based processes with a seamless, mobile-first digital experience that allows communities to focus on the sport they love, not arduous manual processes, PlayHQ is capable of handling thousands of games and millions of players at a time, leveraging powerful integrations, intuitive design and rich data to create an all-in-one software solution that streamlines every aspect of community sport administration.

 RefAssist delivers a simple and seamless interface for referees and officials who can obtain detailed schedules and calculate match fees, mileage allowances, and other expenses - all from a central, online hub. Further, RefAssist eases the work of sports federations by automating appointments and streamlining all communication and financial tasks.

Since its launch in 2015, RefAssist has evolved to the all-in-one world’s leading referee & officials management platform. Enabling efficient referee management, ensuring errorless manual and automatic appointments, and facilitating communication with all refereeing stakeholders, RefAssist is a great cloud-based platform to help sports associations tackle their referee and officials management.

Every season more than 750,000 matches are appointed with RefAssist, and more than 50,000 referees with over 150 nationalities use RefAssist on a daily basis.

RefAssist’s European customers include The Royal Belgian Football Association, Royal Dutch Hockey Association, Flemish Handball Federation, French Basketball Association, and various other sports federations.

Advising that the alliance between PlayHQ and RefAssist will complement each other’s technology stack, PlayHQ Chief Executive and co-founder, Sam Walch stated “PlayHQ plays a pivotal role in ensuring the AFL, Cricket Australia, Netball Australia and multiple basketball organisations can greatly reduce volunteer and administrator workload for community-level sport.

“We offer a one-stop-shop for the paperless management of competitions and real-time scoring and statistics, and the partnership with RefAssist will only serve to strengthen our solution set and widen our reach in untapped markets, especially an expansion into Europe.

“We look forward to a successful partnership with RefAssist and by joining forces, we can extend our world-class solution to other markets so their audience can focus on growing their sport instead of being snowed under by paperwork and cumbersome, traditional systems and processes,” Walch said.

RefAssist Chief Executive, Dieter De Naeyer says the partnership presents a lot of opportunities for both companies, adding “PlayHQ is a match made in heaven for RefAssist in terms of accurate competition data. Via our API we receive real time updates concerning the matches of our customers. This manner of working assures that official appointments can be done with peace of mind.

“Easing the workload of referee managers, appointment officers and secretariats with an all-in one platform has always been our goal. In collaboration with PlayHQ, we’re looking forward to serving the Australian market and broadening our partnership throughout the European market.”